Focus on the Furniture Industry Books in Review
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F THE SCRIBE THE JOURNAL OF THE JEWISH MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Featured in this issue Focus on the Furniture Industry Books in Review 12.497”wide spine .497” background C0-M75-Y15-K30 THE SCRIBE THE JOURNAL OF THE JEWISH MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES OF BRITISH COLUMBIA FOCUS ON THE FURNITURE INDUSTRY Volume XXXIII • 2013 This issue of The Scribe has been generously supported by: The Betty Averbach Foundation. Editor: Cynthia Ramsay Publications Committee: Gary Averbach, Betty Nitkin, Harley Rothstein, Perry Seidelman and archivist Jennifer Yuhasz, with appreciation to Josie Tonio McCarthy, Marcy Babins and Michael Schwartz Layout: Western Sky Communications Ltd. Statements of fact or opinion appearing in The Scribe are made on the responsibility of the authors alone and do not imply the endorsements of the editor or the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia. Please address all submissions and communications on editorial and circulation matters to: THE SCRIBE Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia 6184 Ash Street, Vancouver, B.C., V5Z 3G9 604-257-5199 • [email protected] • http://www.jewishmuseum.ca Membership Rates: Households – $54; Institutions/Organizations – $75 Includes one copy of each issue of The Scribe and The Chronicle Back issues and extra copies – $20 plus postage ISSN 0824 6048 © The Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia/Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia is a nonprofit organization. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted without the written permission of the publisher, with the following exception: JMABC grants permission to individuals to download or print single copies of articles for personal use. A person may reproduce excerpts from articles in the journal for any purpose that respects the moral rights of the authors, on the condition that the source is fully acknowledged. Permission does not extend to other kinds of copying, such as copying for general distribution, pro- motional purposes, new collective works or resale. Printed on 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. Cover Photos: See photo sources throughout the publication. THE JEWISH MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES OF BRITISH COLUMBIA The Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia ( JHSBC) was founded on January 25, 1971, under the direction of historian Cyril Leonoff, with assistance from the National Council of Jewish Women and Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region. By 2002, the JHSBC’s collection had become so extensive that it became apparent that a formal archives was needed to house their records. The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia ( JMABC), administered by the historical society, officially opened to the public on March 25, 2007. The JMABC is the preeminent and authoritative body for the gathering and sharing of community memory of Jewish life in British Columbia. Through its publications, education programs, public events and the operation of the archive s, the JMABC collects, researches, preserves, exhibits and interprets archival material and artifacts related to the history of the Jewish people in British Columbia. The archives’ holdings comprise records from 70 organizations, families and individuals, and cover the years 1860-2013, with predominant dates of 1920-2005. As of publication, the archives holds 300 linear metres of textual files, 300,000 photographs and 700 oral history interviews. The Scribe is the annual journal published by the JMABC. As an anthology, often with peer-reviewed articles, it seeks to cover all aspects of the Jewish experience in British Columbia and Western Canada, including history, culture, art, literature, religion, communal activities and contributions to the development and progress of Canada. THE SCRIBE Volume XXXIII • 2013 CONTENTS I. Editor’s Introduction 7 II. Focus on the Furniture Industry 29 From the JMABC Collection: Oral History Excerpts – The Furniture Industry 29 From the JMABC Collection: Images of the Furniture Industry 145 Addendum: Not (Yet) in the JMABC Collection 157 Comparison Shopping 193 III. Recent Publications 203 IV. Archivist’s Report 209 7 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION To say that the stories in this issue of The Scribe captured my imagination would not only be cliché but an understatement. This is my fifth year editing the annual Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia ( JMABC) journal and, while I’ve found every edi- tion interesting, this one was different somehow – this became clear to me a few weeks into the month it took to prepare th e first draft. I was driving my cousin home and, as I sat in my car at the stoplight at the corner of Hastings and Burrard, looking at the Marine Building dwarfed by the tall glass structures that comprise so much of Vancouver architecture nowadays, I had the sensation of having been transported into the future. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I had been mentally living in the downtown of the 1930s-1960s. Far from being broken, the spell was enhanced. I have lived in this city for more than 20 years and, since I arrived, the downtown landscape has changed completely. I can’t even count the number of skyscrapers that have been built over those years. And yet, the hours I’ve spent looking at archival photos (and videos), the number of times I read and re-read the oral histories while editing them, the weeks I’ve spent squinting at city directories from the 1880s to the 1980s, the number of internet searches I’ve conducted – what I have discovered has com- pletely changed my perspective. As much as Vancouver has grown, there are so many tangible reminders of its past: a new awning covers the original tile inlay that still runs underneath; a shop has tripled in size, it has upper windows t hat weren’t visible in the 1950s, yet the vents and supporting pillars show it to be the same store; the interior has been gutted and modernized, yet the preserved façade goes back some 100 years. Not only do I look at the city differently, but I have a new appreciation for my day job. As the owner/publisher of the Jewish Independent (for- 8 T H E S C R I B E PUBLIC DOMAIN; CITY OF ARCHIVES VANCOUVER 145-1 Images like this one of a National Furniture billboard seen looking south from the north end of the second Granville Bridge, circa 1948, had me watching a three-part series from the Vancouver Public Library’s online archives on the building of the current Granville Street Bridge. The one pictured here was built in 1909, replacing the bridge before it; the current bridge was built to the west of this one from 1951-54, running tightly up against the still-extant (for now) Continental Hotel on the left, whose bottom floors no longer get any sun. merly the Jewish Western Bulletin), I have always under- stood the responsibility the community newspaper has to document history as it hap- pens. But never have I bene- fitted from it so much as a resource, as I worked to deter- mine – mainly for the furni- ture dealers included in this issue’s Addendum, but also for parts of the oral history excerpts – whether the person was Jewish, whether they were related to someone else with the same last name, whether they had passed away, etc. Thanks to the initiative of the JMABC a few years back, Multicultural Canada scanned all of the surviving hard copies of the JWB/JI from 1928-2005 and put them online. While the search function leaves a lot to be desired – the optical character recognition software must have been relatively new at the time – it does find valu- ab le information. Every article, birth, wedding, meeting and other social announcement, every obituary, every advertisement, every item Editor’s Introduction 9 offers a glimpse into someone’s life, and this edition of The Scribe would be much less robust without this resource. The idea to focus on the furniture industry in its heyday first arose in 2003. At that time, much was done by the JMABC (then called the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia) to secure interviews with the people who had taken part in it, or their children, if they had already passed away: 11 of the 18 interviews herein were conducted then, and the gathering process for images and other information began. As things often happen in life, the idea went no further at that time, but, in large part due to Gary Averbach, who has a personal interest in the subject, having been part of this historic period, it resurfaced – and I am very happy and honoured to have been one of the many p eople who have brought it to fruition. In addition to the 2003 interviews, there were seven others (one from 1983, one from 2012 and five from 2013) – all 18 were conducted by volunteers. Volunteers also transcribed them all: in their entirety, these interviews comprise more than 235,000 words. Approximately 35,000 of those words, or some 15%, form the oral history section and the first part of the Addendum of this journal. Slightly more than half of the topic-related photos available in the JMABC were used in the From the JMABC Collection sections of this issue, with photographs from the City of Vancouver Archives and Vancouver Public Library supplementing the Editor’s Introduction and Addendum sections. All this is to say that the JMABC and its compatriots are an incredible resource and this edition of The Scribe is but a small sample of what they have in their collections. This edition is also an example of what the JMABC could have among its holdings if more members of the community supported the work that it does: financially, through donations and/or by volunteer- ing.